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The smallish Pohutakawa I planted out the front of our new house at the start of the year just started flowering about 3 or 4 days ago and should have most of it's flowers out by Christmas Day. The botanic gardens have a pretty awesome row of them down the path through the main building. A special breed that flowers profusely.

Merry Christmas to you, you dear man. I would just like, once again, to tell you in particular, and this community at large, how very important you have all become to me. It's become a habit in my house, when I am going out (and I have a notoriously stay-at-home spouse) to tell him which social group I am convening with that particular day/evening, and which category the friends I am seeing fit in to. He doesn't remember who everyone is, but he understands the social groupings. Since the advent of the internet in our house, specifically, about 16 years ago, we've had various groups that I've belonged to. The most enduring ones are my Fat Ladies, the Big King Queens, and in the last 5 years, the PAS people. To wit, this was the conversation last night: "I'm going to the pub" "Who are you going with?" "Sacha and Jackson and Sofie" "Remind me?" "Public Address friends" "Ah, yes" and so it goes. My social life has always been a reasonably full one, and I once thought that after a certain age, I would never make new friends. How wrong I was. How delightfully wrong I was. So thank you, Russell. Thank you to everyone I've met in this wonderful community. You have enriched my life, and I look forward to a New Year, when those friendships continue to deepen. I also look forward to meeting more of you, in the not too distant future.

Yay! I was so worried about you all day yesterday and I expressed that to Jackson. I wanted to hurry home to see if there was news, but lo and behold, the iphone was whipped out, and miracle of miracles, you had already twittered. I loved technology at that point, I really did. Biggest of loves to you, and your lovely family. I am hoping that Teddy will get a little outing sometime in, say, January.

Here I am stuck (with my family) in North America for a month - it's cold(ish), gets dark early, there are xmas lights everywhere, a definite buzz, feels just a bit like xmas ....

This is my second North American Christmas, and if it doesn't turn up snowing in the next forty-eight hours, the North American Jetstream and I are going to have words. If I have to be cold and twelve thousand miles from home it should at least be a white Christmas. (Likely it won't be - it's been uncannily, unseasonably warm for the last two months - but I'm hoping threats will work where pleading hasn't. To inanimate weather systems. Oh well.)

I'm spending Christmas Day in hospital with my present: the newest member of our family, born yesterday. I await the Auckland hospital version of Xmas dinner with some trepidation!

I don't think I actually congratulated you and Teddy on Twitter, so let me do it here. I hope everything goes well until you make the transition home, and I await the report on your hospital Christmas dinner with some interest.

The smallish Pohutakawa I planted out the front of our new house at the start of the year

will turn into the largest Pohutukawa you've ever seen and your new house will suffer. That or religiously prune it every year and place a caveat on the title to that effect so each new homeowner has to do the same.

It is a matter of serendipity that the pohutukawa tree throws out a blossom apparently perfectly timed and styled for for a religious and cultural festival that developed on the far side of the globe.

When I was a kid, I always associated pohutukawa with family holidays at the beach, or trips to Auckland. It always seemed a little exotic, this bright, extravagant tree that didn't normally grow in my part of the country.

Won't someone think of the poor South Islanders and inland North Islanders who can't enjoy pohutukawa in full bloom? Or is that what the plastic pohutukawa Christmas decorations are for?

This is my second North American Christmas, and if it doesn't turn up snowing in the next forty-eight hours, the North American Jetstream and I are going to have words. If I have to be cold and twelve thousand miles from home it should at least be a white Christmas. (Likely it won't be - it's been uncannily, unseasonably warm for the last two months - but I'm hoping threats will work where pleading hasn't. To inanimate weather systems. Oh well.)

I don't expect it to actually snow in Berkeley - the kids are off to Tahoe for a couple of days skiing (it's a dry La Niña year - mostly man-made snow here). In California this means potential upcoming droughts - it was raining more in Dunedin before I left a week ago.

Of course if you are red/green colourblind then those amazing Pohutakawa trees all look a deep shade of green when you're driving past them on the motorway :-(. On the plus side I'm off to the beach and the trees and house are standing still which gives the eyes a bit of time to adjust so I can at least partially appreciate them!